


a Bird in Hand (You Took the Bones of Me)

by tomato_greens



Series: Listen, Listen - music ficlets [20]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek/Stiles-ish - Freeform, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:49:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out that Scott and Allison are way better at being friends than they ever were at being in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a Bird in Hand (You Took the Bones of Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HalfFizzbin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfFizzbin/gifts).



> Written for [HalfFizzbin](http://halffizzbin.tumblr.com) on [tumblr](http://tomato-greens.tumblr.com/post/34215853508/fic-a-bird-in-hand-you-took-the-bones-of-me), which is this newfangled blogging platform you may have heard of? Written to [Life Less Ordinary](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGYe1pnc5qU) by Carbon Leaf.
> 
> Also I 'ship Scott/Allison pretty hard so this was a bit difficult but I enjoyed the challenge!

It turns out that Scott and Allison are way better at being friends than they ever were at being in love. For one thing, they actually study; Scott gets his first B in chemistry since the year started (Allison and Stiles kiss his cheeks at the same time while Harris makes an uncomfortable sound from the front of the room––Scott barely holds in his laughter, but Stiles outright cackles and Allison doesn’t stop her own undignified guffaw).

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Allison says a week after that, one hand on his shoulder, while they’re walking towards her car. 

Scott––would have, is the thing, because one thing he isn’t is disloyal, but a pressure he didn’t even know was nested in his larynx suddenly dissolves. “Okay,” he says.

“Actually, maybe you shouldn’t,” Allison says, and smiles, a little sad. She clutches her purse a little closer to the soft convex of her hip. 

“Okay,” he says again, and pats her hand with his own. “I get it.”

“Good,” she says, and grabs his sleeve reflexively as he makes to run over towards the bus. “Come on, I can give you a ride.”

“You sure?” Scott asks, because the last time they were alone in this car together they were having slightly kinky claws-out sex, but Allison nods, quick, a bright flash of pain like a Band-Aid on newly-healed skin.

“Yeah,” she says, so Scott gets in the car.

-

Derek is fucked up, that much isn’t up for debate, but Scott can’t blame him––every time someone’s threatened his mom in the past six months, which is way too many times by his count, he’s seen the burnt edges of a possible future, how blackly empty he would feel if she were gone. He can’t imagine if Nina Lola or Grandpa McCall and his cousins were gone, too, all in a flash, and he doesn’t even see them every year. Erica and Boyd don’t get it, didn’t, but he thinks Isaac does––Derek’s trying, and Scott has to give him credit for that. Trying is basically all Scott has been doing his whole life.

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Isaac says, when Scott asks, “but I figure he’s better than being totally on my own.”

“Yeah,” says Scott.

“I’ve had enough of that,” Isaac says, looking at his hands, which are––big, sturdy. Bigger than Scott’s.

“Sure,” says Scott, although he doesn’t understand, can’t, not viscerally, not without effort. 

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Isaac says, not accusingly. “You have your mom.”

“And Stiles,” says Scott on autopilot, because it’s impossible for him to conceive of his life without Stiles’s pushy little face somewhere in it.

“And Stiles,” Isaac agrees, a molasses-slow grin taking over the lower half of his face. He links his hands behind his head. “I was jealous of him.”

“Yeah?” says Scott. “That’s weird. I thought you didn’t even know who I was before––you know, before all this.”

Isaac shrugs. “I didn’t, really. Just your name, normal stuff. But––later, after. He was your Pack, you know?”

“Yeah,” says Scott cautiously. “But. Jealousy? We didn’t know what we were doing. We still don’t.”

“You had options,” says Isaac, his voice cracked open and free.

-

He finds Allison curled up on her bed the day after the school year ends, her hair over her face, crying.

“Allison,” he says, stricken, and rushes over to her; she reaches out with her hands, but he can’t tell if she wants him to come closer or to get away. “Allison, what is it?”

She pulls her hands in close and says, “My—my mom,” in a broken voice he hasn’t heard the whole time they’ve known each other. “I miss my mom.”

It has been six years since Scott has held anybody after their mom has died, but he hasn’t forgotten how to curve his body into a shield, how to hold someone’s hands, how to stroke the nape of their neck. “I know,” he whispers, not sure what else to say. “I know.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says what feels like hours later, and they don’t kiss, and it’s good.

-

Stiles spends a lot of time with Derek and, weirdly, Peter, or at least Peter’s computer, nowadays. Scott doesn’t really know what’s going on––Stiles is shutting him out like he hasn’t done since after the funeral, and Scott doesn’t know what to do to get him back, or if Stiles even wants him. This is a thought that is horrible, so Scott spends as much time not thinking it as possible.

“Man,” he sighs, and throws a tennis ball at the side of the house. He refuses to respond to dog jokes, but there is something really satisfying about pitching and catching, the thunk of the ball as it hits the charred siding, the crunchy sound it makes on the forest floor as it bounces its way back to him.

“Think fast!” he hears from behind him, and whirls around just as Isaac throws himself at him.

“Hi,” he says, laughing, shoving Isaac off into the grass. “What are you doing?”

Isaac grabs for the tennis ball and manages to pluck it out of his hand by virtue of clawing Scott’s knuckles up a little. “Time to play fetch,” he says, waggling his eyebrows in a way that totally doesn’t fit the shape of his face, which Lydia regularly refers to as “weirdly aristocratic, Lahey, Jesus Christ,” before bounding off into the woods. Scott isn’t really sure when he started paying attention the shape of Isaac’s face, but there isn’t time to think about it.

“Prepare to die,” he yells, adding, “haha,” just in case anyone mistakes him for a rogue Alpha or something, and takes off.

-

Allison starts seeing someone from Beacon Township, fifteen minutes away from Beacon Hills, this tall squinty guy who goes to the community college there. She could do better, Scott thinks, but he sees the care Mike treats her with, how he loves to love her, and guesses she could do worse, too.

“It’s weird,” he says, eating store-bought peach pie with her at his mom’s kitchen table. Mike has gone home for the evening, but not before kissing Allison good-bye in front of Scott’s house, where he usually drops her off after their dates. “It’s good, though.”

“Yeah,” she says, sounding a little uncertain, forking the last of her pie onto his plate, but she doesn’t look so lost around the eyes anymore. “Yeah, it’s good.”

-

Isaac doesn’t look upset when he’s upset: it’s like he’s learned how to swallow it all down, somehow, like he can’t show it even if he wanted to. But Scott hasn’t been getting to know him for nothing, and it’s not like his nose just stopped working or something, and now it feels normal to walk up to him and put his arms around Isaac without even asking for permission, like the wolf just––knows what need there is, and responds.

“Thanks,” Isaac says, shaking him free gently. “I––thanks. I don’t usually––I mean, yeah.”

“Any time,” says Scott, smiling, drawing away. 

“Do you know what’s up with Derek lately?” says Isaac, after a couple minutes’ comfortable silence. “He seems so––I don’t know, like, normal.”

“No idea,” Scott admits, shaking his head in disbelief. “I saw him whistling the other day. It was totally crazy.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Isaac says what feels like hours later, putting his arm back around Scott’s shoulder, and then––they kiss, and it’s good.


End file.
